


Dreamless

by salvagingthestars



Series: Return to Henrietta [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:01:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21928642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvagingthestars/pseuds/salvagingthestars
Summary: "Adam woke up screaming. He sat bolt upright in bed, his sheets sticky against his sweat-soaked skin, clawing at his throat in a vain attempt to pry away the iron grip that had wrapped around it to crush the life from him. It took a few frantic, breathless moments of scrabbling against his own skin before Adam realized the hand around his throat had disappeared when he had woken up."Sequel to "Snapshots," but a lot more plot this time.
Relationships: Henry Cheng/Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Series: Return to Henrietta [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579273
Comments: 9
Kudos: 83





	1. Sleepless

Adam woke up screaming. He sat bolt upright in bed, his sheets sticky against his sweat-soaked skin, clawing at his throat in a vain attempt to pry away the iron grip that had wrapped around it to crush the life from him. It took a few frantic, breathless moments of scrabbling against his own skin before Adam realized the hand around his throat had disappeared when he had woken up.

His dorm room was eerily silent, his own jagged breath the only noise rattling through the darkness. His roommate had left for summer break that morning, thankfully, so there was no one to wake up. Adam coughed harshly, his throat still raw from screaming and the weight of the phantom grip he could still feel, vice-like, around his windpipe. He felt his stomach lurch, and barely managed to throw himself out the bed, stumbling through the dark to the trash can near the foot of his bed, before he was retching. Only a bit of bile came up, bitter and burning against the back of his throat. Adam sat on the floor for a moment to catch his breath, still clinging to the edge of the trashcan. He had barely thought that he should turn on the light before the fluorescent flickered to life overhead, sudden and blinding in contrast to the darkness. Adam felt too miserable, too sore across his entire body, to wonder at the magic that would usually still set him on edge - especially so far from Cabeswater.

Eventually, Adam managed to peel himself off the floor, grabbing his phone from where he had plugged it in on his desk before collapsing, face first, on to the bed. He dialed the number without looking, only turning his face from where he had buried it in his pillow so that he could speak intelligibly.

Ronan picked up on the first ring.

“Parrish?” he demanded, angry and slightly hoarse from sleep, and still lisping around his retainers. “What in the ungodly fuck-“

“Ronan,” Adam interrupted him, his voice a weak rasp, the weight of his exhaustion audible, and Ronan went silent. “I had a, uh, a nightmare.”

“What, and you need me to comfort you?” Ronan said it snidely, annoyed and dismissive, but Adam knew Ronan would if he asked.

He missed Ronan more than ever in that moment, like a physical ache, and thought briefly of getting Ronan’s jacket from where he had stashed it in his closet, holding it close to his body and burying his nose in the smell of Ronan. His exhaustion, though, kept his body sinking into the mattress, his limbs too heavy to seriously entertain moving.

“Isn’t that the point of the whole boyfriend thing?” Adam asked.

“Or you could just get a teddy bear,” Ronan suggested. “It’ll probably be less pissed off if you wake it up at three in the morning because of a bad dream.”

Adam hugged his pillow closer to himself, careful not to jostle his phone too much. “I’d much rather have you here.”

“Damn,” Ronan said, and his voice was suddenly clearer, as if had finally bothered to sit up. “Getting sentimental on me, Parrish. Something must have really fucked you up.”

Adam started to nod, before fully processing that Ronan couldn’t see him. “Yeah.”

“Was it from Cabeswater?” Ronan asked, sounding fully serious for the first time in the conversation. “Like the ones you were talking about at Thanksgiving?”

“Yeah,” Adam told him. “But it’s getting worse. Something just tried to kill me in my dream.”

“I-“ Ronan began, but didn’t seem to know how to finish the thought. “Wh- Parrish, are you fucking with me?”

Though Ronan couldn’t see him, Adam raised his hand to his throat, running his hand gently over where he was sure bruises would form by the morning.

“Something tried to choke me to death in my dream,” Adam said. “I could still feel the pain when I woke up.”

‘That shouldn’t be possible,’ Adam thought Ronan wanted to say, but that was too obvious to be worth saying.

Ronan asked instead, “What’s ‘something’?”

Adam thought he sounded scared, but it was hard to tell with Ronan, especially over the phone.

“The… It wasn’t human,” Adam told him. He was struggling to put together all the disjointed, incoherent pieces of his nightmare, foggy and twisted up in mortal terror. “The dream logic didn’t totally make sense, but it was like… shambling, and shifting. It didn’t have a definite form, really.”

“Do you remember anything specific? Color, size, fucking… teeth or whatever the fuck, I don’t know.”

“I don’t know, okay?” Adam snapped back, feeling defensive. “It was a dream, mine usually aren’t very clear anyway. I just remember it was… probably human-sized, maybe a little bigger? It smelled like… rotten, almost, I think. And it was really strong. I thought it was gonna crush my throat.”

There was a pause on the other end, and Adam could imagine Ronan stopping, taking a deep breath, trying to focus his thoughts. Around Adam, at least, he seemed to be getting better about controlling his anger.

“Are you alright?” Ronan asked finally.

He had let worry bleed into his voice, taking some of the sharpness out of his anger. Adam thought the anger was more a consequence of something hurting Adam and Ronan being helpless to stop it than at being woken up, but it could easily have been both, or just Ronan being prickly as a point of principle.

Still, he assured Ronan anyway, “I’m fine. A little bruising around my neck, probably, but I’m fine.”

“Thought I was the only one allowed to leave bruises on your neck?” Ronan tried to say it as a joke, maybe trying to cheer Adam up, but his voice was strained, like he was holding some greater flow of emotion back.

Adam managed a brittle laugh. “Jealous of a dream monster?”

He could picture Ronan rolling his eyes. “What time’s your flight tomorrow?”

“Ten,” Adam told him. He knew Ronan hadn’t forgotten so much as he was reluctant to ask outright for reassurance.

“You gonna be okay there by yourself?”

Adam rolled his eyes. “I think I’ll manage. You can go back to your beauty sleep.”

“Fuck off,” Ronan replied without heat. “You almost got killed in your dreams. Like I’m gonna trust you alone in your dorm after that.”

“What exactly are you gonna do over the phone?”

Ronan didn’t reply. Adam could still hear him breathing and the sound so was close and comfortable that Adam could almost calm down the panic that had seemed to tense his entire body since he’d woken up. But even over the phone, Ronan’s frustration was palpable, taut in his voice like a wire.

“Just…” Ronan stopped, took a breath. “Stay on the phone with me. Gansey and his harem get back the day after tomorrow, and we can figure this out all with them, once you get back, scry or talk to the psychics or let Gansey do his magic sleuthing shit, but just, fucking… Just stay on the phone with me for now, okay? So I know you’re like, alright and shit.”

“Okay,” Adam told him, not bothering to whisper because his throat was still too soar to speak at a normal volume anyway. “Yeah, okay. I don’t exactly wanna be alone right now anyway.”

Ronan gave a sigh of relief. “Like I’d fucking let you.”

“Isn’t that my choice?”

“Not if I drive up to Boston right now.”

“You’d get here just it time to wave goodbye to my plane.”

“At least I’d get to see you.” Ronan had probably meant it to be sarcastic, but it came out heartbreakingly earnest.

“You’ll see see me tomorrow,” Adam reminded him. “Someone has to drive me home from the airport.”

Ronan managed a laugh, and Adam wished fiercely that Ronan was actually on the bed beside him, and not just his voice.

“Don’t let me fall asleep,” Adam told him suddenly. “If you’re gonna stay on the phone with me, you gotta keep me up.”

“Why?” Ronan asked, hesitant, and uncomfortable in his hesitance.

Adam tried to swallow around the lump in his throat, and winced at the pain at the base of his bruised throat. “I don’t - How did you deal with it? Knowing you could be hurt in your dreams, or killed even? How did you deal with knowing that, that if you feel asleep that-”

Ronan cut him off. “We don’t know that it’s the same for you,” he said, sounding more like he was trying to convince himself than Adam. “You’re not a Dreamer. It shouldn’t be the same for you as it is for me.”

“Something still managed to choke me,” Adam insisted, rasping through his hoarseness as his voice rose. “I thought I was gonna die when I woke up. It doesn’t make any sense, I know it doesn’t, but I couldn’t breathe, or make it stop, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it if it comes back when I fall asleep again-”

“I know!” Ronan half-shouted, loud and a little sudden in Adam’s good ear, so that Adam almost flinched away before he caught himself. He thought that, if it had been any voice but Ronan’s, he would have. “Jesus Christ, I know, okay? I just… I don’t know how to help, if its that. I can’t even dream with you from here.”

“I don’t need you too,” Adam told him. He tried to focus his energy on Ronan, pushing down his own terror for a moment to focus on calming down Ronan, because that was better than dwelling in fear and paranoia. “Just keep talking to me, okay? Its kinda like you’re here, and that helps me not get caught up in overthinking and paranoia when I can’t do shit to make this better right now.”

Ronan let out an audible breath. “Okay, I… The fuck do you want me to talk to you about?”

“What’d you do today?” Adam suggested.

“I don’t…” Another breath. “I went out and milked the cows this morning, and then after breakfast I took Opal out riding on that trail that leads down to the creek with the willow trees, and I think she’s getting more used to being on a horse.”

“Do you think she’ll ever be able to ride on her own?”  
Ronan made a skeptical noise. “Not any time soon, at least. She still gets really skittish and clings to me at the whole time. She likes feeding them carrots, though.”

“Does that mean she’s eating them herself?”

There was a small, reluctant laugh on the other end of the line. “Opal tends to prefer the sugar cubes.”

Adam managed a small, fond smile, and wished Ronan were there to see it. He let his eyes fall shut as Ronan kept talking, his voice deep and familiar and reassuring, and his little interjections of sharp humor and cursing as he spoke enough to keep Adam awake until the pale gray light of dawn finally bled into the sky.

* * *  
Adam dozed for most of the ride home from the airport. He had visible shadows under his eyes, like purpling bruises, and his head hung heavily on his hand where he had propped it on the armrest of the passenger seat. Once they were out of the city, he let his eyelids fall closed against the steady hum of the car on empty asphalt. The noon sun overhead was hot, and the Virginia summer humidity outside cloying, but the BMW’s air conditioner kept them cool and comfortable.

Ronan hadn’t turned the radio on for once, so that the only other sounds were the cicadas in the trees outside. Ronan drove with one hand on the wheel and the other on Adam’s leg, spread across the denim just above his knee. He rubbed his thumb intermittently across the fabric, almost absentminded, except for the worried glances Adam could feel Ronan casting him whenever he pulled his attention from the road.

It wasn’t a sexual touch, beyond the thrill any touch from Ronan still sent through Adam even after they had been dating for nearly a year. Adam leaned into it, tilting his leg toward Ronan so that his boyfriend could establish a better grip. He could imagine Ronan’s sharp, private smile as he felt the hand on his leg shift, the fingers spreading a little more, but couldn’t bring himself to pry open his eyes to look at it. Ronan would still be handsome later, he figured; Adam had a whole summer to stare at him.

“Didn’t manage to sleep on the plane?” Ronan asked at one point, the worry obvious in his tone even when Adam couldn’t see it in his face.

Ronan always wore his heart on his sleeve, no matter how hard he fought to hide it.

Adam allowed himself a smile, but his voice came out painfully hoarse when he spoke. “It was a ninety minute flight. What would’ve been the point?”

“You need to sleep more,” Ronan shot back. “Ninety minutes is something, at least.”

“I figured I’d just sleep in your bed. It’s way comfier than an airplane seat.”

“That’s not exactly what I was planning to do with you in my bed tonight.”

Adam laughed a bit at that. He sat up and opened his eyes, lifting his head from his hand so that he could link his fingers with Ronan’s and bring their interlocked hands to his lips before dropping them to his lap. He could see the Ronan smile out of the corner of his eye.

“Let me sleep for a while first. Finals already knocked me out, and after that nightmare I kinda feel like I got hit by a truck.”

Ronan was silent for a moment before he said, “You were right about the bruises. You look like shit.”

Adam brought his free hand up to rub self-consciously at his neck. “My throat still hurts,” he admitted.

“I’ll make some tea when we get home.”

“Tea?” Adam repeated, unable to keep a bit of laughter from his voice.

He could see a flush spread across Ronan’s cheeks. “Yes, tea. I, uh, dreamt it for you this morning, after we hung up. It should help make your voice feel better.”

Adam squeezed their hands where they still rested in his lap. “Sap,” he accused.

“Fuck off. I should just let you lose your voice, so I wouldn’t have to deal with all your bitching for a few days.”

“You love me too much for that,” Adam teased.

Ronan rolled his eyes. “Doesn’t mean you’re not annoying as shit. It’s actually worse now, because I have no choice but to put up with you.”

“I could get my room back at St. Agnes’s,” Adam offered. “If you don’t wanna have to put up with me.”

Ronan squeezed their hands again. “Don’t even joke about that,” he said. “I’ve had to miss you basically since January. You’re stuck with me for the rest of the summer.”

Adam smiled. “Good,” he replied, turning to face Ronan. Ronan kept his eyes on the road, shooting self-conscious looks as Adam stared back at him unabashedly. “I missed sleeping next to you.”

Ronan gave a small, incredulous snort. “Now who’s a fucking sap?”

“Still you.”

Adam was silent for a moment, his eyes still on Ronan, before he spoke. “Lynch?”

“Yeah?”

“The ley line is stronger,” Adam said, frowning.

Ronan looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “What do you mean?”

“I usually can’t feel it out this far. And it’s strong. Stronger than it has been since…. Stronger than it’s been in a really long time. But I can feel it, like all the blood rushing to my head at once.”

“What does that mean?” Ronan asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe it’s not actually stronger,” Ronan suggested, not sounding as though he believed what he was saying. “Maybe it’s because you’ve been gone awhile and you’re not used to feeling it so it feels stronger now that you can.”

“Maybe,” Adam said doubtfully. Then, “But I could feel it at school. Really weak, but always there. This… it’s like being in the cave again.”

“And you have no idea what that means?”

Adam shook his head. “None.”

Ronan let the silence sit for a moment. “You should get some more sleep,” he told Adam eventually. “Or at least close your eyes for a while. It’s still a decent drive back to Henrietta.”

“Alright,” Adam gave in reluctantly, only because he knew neither of them would be able to come up with an answer any time soon. “Just for a bit.”

* * *

Adam fought the urge to fidget on the kitchen stool as he tilted his head up, allowing Ronan to run careful, calloused fingers over the dark ring of bruises tattooed onto the skin of his neck. Obedience didn’t come easily to Adam; his will itched against even this temporary restraint, a instinctual response to being controlled. And Ronan Lynch, all dangerous edges and sharp smiles and vibrant, volatile energy, grated against every survival instinct Adam had cultivated his entire life. But Ronan’s touch was careful, conscious, ghosting over Adam’s skin as though worrying over a half-feral cat. He felt reminded again of how difficult it could be to know Ronan, even though Adam did better than most. Ronan sometimes felt fragmented, like the multicolored light splintered by the shards of stained glass in the windows of cathedrals.

in the spacious kitchen of the Barns, the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows cast Ronan’s face in deep gold and molten shadow, drawing out the sharpness of his features and fullness of his lips.

“Jesus,” Ronan muttered, half under his breath, but only centimeters away from Adam’s good ear, so Adam could hear him clearly. “Bitch really did a fucking number on you, huh.”

Adam shrugged a bit, careful not to dislodge Ronan’s hands. “The tea helped, at least.”

Ronan scrunched up his nose a bit. “You still look like you were literally dragged to hell.”

“Thanks.”

That earned an eye roll. “I’ll dream up some concealer for you.”

He went to back away, but Adam stopped him, wrapping his hand gently around Ronan’s wrist to keep him in place. Ronan stilled almost immediately at the touch, watching Adam expectantly.

“I thought you were supposed to be careful about how often you were pulling things from dreams?”

“A tub of fucking concealer isn’t gonna deplete the leyline.”

“No,” Adam countered, “But it’s unnecessary. The tea helped with the pain, but I don’t really care about how a bunch of bruises look. Who gives a shit?”

He remembered, too, the things he had instructed Ronan to dream up before; grisly murders and blackmail material, ugly things unworthy of the beautiful forests and cars and brothers Ronan brought into the world when left only to his own imagination. Even now, Adam worried his own darkness could taint Ronan’s dreams if Ronan dreamed too many things for him. Ronan would hate that answer, though, and Adam didn’t want to bother with a fight where neither of them would ever be willing to give ground, so he didn’t add that to his argument.

Ronan looked like he swallowed his first reaction, his face suddenly tight, before he spoke. “I know you’re not vain or whatever shit,” he said, “But won’t it bother you, having that reminder every time you look in the mirror?”

Oh. “Does it bother you?” Adam asked,

Ronan avoided his eyes. “I just… It’s fucking ugly, to look at,” - which stung, as Adam thought of his own darkness and ugliness, though of course Ronan hadn’t meant that any part of Adam was ugly - “And if I can help you… If I can help you with this, because I can’t stop it from actually fucking happening…”

“Hey,” Adam said softly. He tightened his grip on Ronan’s wrist and turned his head to plant a quick kiss against the skin there before turning back to face his boyfriend. “What’ve I said about trying to solve all my problems for me?”

“I know,” Ronan bit out, “But I can’t stand just fucking sitting around and waiting for something to come kill you in your dreams, and not being able to do anything about it besides keeping you from actually getting sleep for once.”

“I asked you to do that,” Adam reminded him. “So you can stop with the self-flagellation shit.”

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

“And you’ve always been the first to call me on it.”

“I’ve never claimed I wasn’t a hypocrite. I’m a man of many vices.”

Adam laughed, and noted that it didn’t send a searing pain through his throat as it had that morning; Ronan’s tea had done its work well.

“I am too,” he told Ronan. “But fortunately, vanity isn’t really one of them. You’re not supposed to strain the leyline for unnecessary things while it recovers. If I can live with these bruises for a few days, do you think that you can?”

Ronan sighed, as though gathering his composure. “I’ll hate it.”

“That’s your default setting anyway.”

Ronan’s hands came up to cradle Adam’s face, thumbs scraping gently over the stubble on his cheeks, as Ronan finally met Adam’s gaze. He gave a rueful smile.

“Not with you.”

Adam kissed him mostly on instinct, his lips seeking out Ronan’s before his mind had consciously made a decision. Ronan kissed him back eagerly, apparently reveling just like Adam in their first real kiss since Adam had been home. His tongue moved against Adam’s as his hands slid into Adam’s hair, his smell suddenly sharp and heady and immediate, drawing Adam in and inviting him to drown. He fell into it eagerly, tightening his own grip on Ronan’s arm while he looped the fingers of his other hand in the belt loops of Ronan’s jeans, drawing him closer. Adam kept the kiss from becoming too urgent, trying to soak in Ronan’s presence, his closeness, the feeling of him that Adam had missed in his bed at Harvard the night before.

Ronan pulled away first, slow and reluctant, his lips still brushing against Adam’s as their breath intermingled. His hands still cradled Adam’s face, his short fingernails scraping against Adam’s scalp. Adam tried to lean in again, to touch his lips to Ronan’s, but Ronan allowed the touch for only a moment before pulling back again with a slight huff of laughter.

“Easy, Parrish,” he warned, grin wide and easy and unguarded. “Eager, aren’t we?”

Adam raised his eyebrow in response, letting his fingers dip below Ronan’s waistband for a moment and delighting in the flush that spread up Ronan’s neck and across his cheeks at the touch.

“Not just me, apparently.”

Ronan darted in again to kiss him, hot and urgent but so fleeting that Adam could barely register he was being kissed, could barely think to respond, before Ronan pulled away from him again, his face still so close to Adam’s that Adam could feel the warmth of his skin.

“You need to fuck off,” Ronan told him, just a little bit breathless, “And let me actually speak, because I actually had something important to say.”

Adam bit back his instinct to make a sarcastic remark: a skill he’d developed over the past year of dating Ronan Lynch, which had saved them a lot of petty arguments.

“I think we should go to the psychics,” Ronan told him. “We’re both… fuck, we’re in over our heads here. Even when Gansey and Sargent get back tomorrow, their first move will still be to go to her family. And, shit, I don’t know, the more we can know now, the better I think we’ll both manage to sleep tonight.”

“Are you gonna dream with me tonight?” Adam asked.

“Of course,” Ronan answered, fierce and defiant. “I just wanna see if the psychics can help us figure out how I can actually help you once I’m in there, or understand what exactly it is in your nightmares.”

Adam nodded. “Alright.”

That seemed to catch Ronan off guard, for once. “What, just like that? I didn’t think you’d agree to asking for help so quickly.”

“This doesn’t make sense, and it’s driving me insane. There’s no logic, no… no puzzle pieces to put together, no way to figure this out.” Adam took a deep breath. “And besides, you hate Blue’s family. If you’re willing to go to them for help, it must mean you’re really worried.”

“Hate’s a strong word,” Ronan argued. “I don’t like that they treat me like I’m Gansey’s attack dog.”

“You don’t have to come with me,” Adam offered. “I can talk to them on my own.”

“Fuck off,” Ronan answered, swiping his thumb across the skin behind Adam’s bad ear. “Like I’m letting you go into the lionesses’ den alone. Blue’s mom is still dating a fucking hit man, and Calla creeps the shit out of me. I’m going with you.”

“After dinner?” Adam suggested. “Otherwise Maura might feel obligated to make us dinner.”

Ronan made a face, his nose wrinkling in a completely unattractive way that Adam found unfairly endearing; he had the urge to kiss the tip of Ronan’s nose.

“I’m not eating that organic shit,” Ronan said. “I’ll make us dinner.”

Adam laughed. “What, you cook now?”

“I won’t poison you,” Ronan told him, as though it were meant to be reassuring. “Why don’t you text the psychics, and I’ll go find Opal. She’s excited to see you.”

“That works,” Adam said. “But I do have one suggestion.”

“How out of character.”

Adam ignored him. “We’ve got a few hours until dinner time. Why don’t we wait a bit to go get Opal?”

Ronan smirked. “And do what in the meantime?”

Leaning close enough that his lips brushed against Ronan’s when he spoke, Adam murmured, “Take a nap.”

“Asshole,” Ronan laughed, before bridging the distance between them to kiss Adam again.


	2. The Psychics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam and Ronan visit 300 Fox Way

As soon as they had crossed the threshold of 300 Fox Way, someone handed Ronan a child and then promptly disappeared into another room. Ronan took the little girl reflexively, staring at her as if she had just been dropped into his arms from the sky. She stared back at him with large brown eyes and a gap-toothed grin, grasping around his neck with a vice-like grip, as though she never intended to let go.

“Parrish-“ Ronan began imploringly. He held the girl as far away from his body as possible, as though she were contagious.

Adam laughed. “Not a chance, Lynch. You’re better than I am with kids.” He nodded toward Opal, who had wrapped herself around Ronan’s left leg and begun glowering resentfully up at the girl.

“Well what the f-“

“Language!” admonished a voice near Adam’s elbow, as a short woman with close cropped hair dyed a violent magenta pushed past him and Ronan and out the front door.

Ronan stared after her, annoyance clouding his handsome features like a storm. “And who in the-“

“Blue’s second cousin,” Adam interrupted him. “Or something like that. Beck, or Belle maybe. I’m pretty sure I’ve met her before.”

“I don’t know how you would know,” Ronan said with a scowl. “There are too many women in here to tell them apart.”

“Or you’re just a misogynist.”

Ronan merely shrugged. “I still don’t know what to do with the kid.”

The girl suddenly spoke. “Play witch!” she exclaimed, pulling with her whole body and nearly dragging Ronan through the open doorway before he managed to right himself.

“I am not ‘playing witch,’” he told the girl, staring into her eyes as if to better get the message across. She smiled the same bubbly smile at him, undeterred.

“Play witch!” insisted the girl.

“Adam,” came a voice from behind them, before Ronan could say anything else. Adam turned to face Maura, who stood in the hallway in a white blouse and jeans, her hair piled on top of her head in a lopsided bun. Without makeup, Adam thought she looked almost exactly like her daughter.

“Maura,” Adam greeted her, allowing himself a smile. “Thank you for having us over.”

Calla stepped up from behind Maura, her arms crossed over chest as she looked at them. Her lipstick, a dark plum color, nearly matched the purplish hue cast over her hair by the dusk sky outside. “And you brought your boy with you.”

“I’m having a dream problem,” Adam told her. “Wouldn’t seem to make sense not to bring the Dreamer with me.”

“Love being talked about like a tool,” Ronan interjected, shifting the girl in his arms as she began grasping at the space around his head, trying to play with Ronan’s curls.

Adam reached over grasp his shoulder, offering a quick squeeze of apology before returning his hand to his side. “I thought you all were getting along better,” he said, to both Ronan and the psychics, “Since Opal’s been coming over here.”

Calla shrugged. “We like the brat. The snake’s still a little rough around the edges.” She looked down at Opal then, who still clung stubbornly to Ronan’s leg. “Hello, darling. Aren’t you going to say hello to your aunties?”

“Aunties?” Ronan repeated, incredulous. “Absolutely not.”

Calla spared him a disdainful glance. “I didn’t ask your opinion.”

“She’s my dream,” Ronan shot back. “I don’t have to let her come to this freakshow at all.”

Adam saw from the corner of his eye that Ronan looked down, and followed his gaze to see Opal, tugging on the bottom of Ronan’s shirt and staring up at him with pleading eyes. Ronan’s expression softened, probably imperceptibly to anyone but Adam, as he looked back at her.

“We’ll talk about it later, brat,” he said, in as pacifying a tone as Adam had ever heard from him.

Calla looked smug, but she addressed her next comment to Adam. “Haven’t seen bruises like that on you since your first reading.”

Adam reached up to rub at his neck. “That’s why I’m here,” he told her, holding her gaze. “Something in a dream did this to me.”

That earned a skeptical look. “Thought loverboy here was the Dreamer.”

“Hence asking the psychics.”

She stepped forward and raised her hand , as though to touch Adam, but stopped about a foot away from him. “Do you mind?”

Blue had told Adam about Calla’s psychometry, and he had seen it in action the first time he and Ronan had followed Gansey to Fox Way, when Calla had seen some glimpse into the secret that had killed Niall Lynch. Adam’s whole being rebelled against putting himself under that sort of scrutiny, but he supposed he had compromised his privacy the moment he had decided to seek out the help of clairvoyants

Adam nodded, but before Calla could step closer, Ronan interjected.

“Could someone please take this kid from me?”

Maura and Calla both scowled at him, but then Maura yelled, “Lena!”

After a moment, another woman thundered down the stairs. She had a tattoo of a snake curled around her bicep and small, pixie-like features that made Adam wonder if she might also be something not quite normal. At a look from Maura, she took the little girl - who had reached out for her eagerly as soon as she appeared - from Ronan.

Before she could disappear back upstairs, Maura asked her, “Do you mind taking Opal for a bit too?”

Ronan made a face at that. Adam knew how much he hated being parted from his dream creature, as much as he wanted to protect her from worrying how him or Adam: how much more fiercely protective Ronan had become of her since they had found her, bloodied, in Ronan’s nightmares, clinging to his mother’s corpse. Adam had woken up dozens of times to Ronan’s screams as he relived that moment in his dreams.

(It had been Adam who had first suggested Opal begin spending time at Fox Way. He had pitched it to Blue’s family as the little girl, or whatever she was, needed female influences around her, but he’d also worried about her and Ronan, alone in the Barns while Adam was at Harvard. Opal worried constantly about Ronan’s nightmares, because she’d seen him killed, over and over again for years. She wanted more desperately than anything to protect him, and would run into Ronan’s room in tears whenever he woke up screaming.

Adam had hoped some time with Maura and the other women of Fox Way would help her separate herself from Ronan and his nightmares, especially now that she truly existed as her own… not quite person, but becoming closer to one, Adam thought: just a little bit like Matthew.

With the Unmaker gone, Adam had wanted Opal to be able to experience a break from night terrors, and, with incredibly reluctance, he’d gotten Ronan to agree. But Adam could still see on Ronan’s face his initial hatred at being separated from his little dream girl, at being unable to protect her from the things that had killed him over and over again in his own head for so many years, and it still broke Adam’s heart a little. He remembered finding Opal and the Unmade Aurora in Ronan’s nightmares; he didn’t think he’d ever be able to get that image out of his head.)

The woman - Lena - looked almost as reluctant to take Opal as Ronan did to part with her. “I’ve got plans at nine.”

Maura waved her hand dismissively. “So do I. This shouldn’t take nearly that long.”

Lena rolled her eyes a bit, but she reached out her free hand, and Opal took it willingly enough once she’d pried herself off of Ronan.

Once they had retreated back upstairs, Calla asked shortly, “All set now?”

Ronan merely scowled in return. Adam reached out and grasped his hand for a brief second, now that it was free, before dropping it again as Calla moved toward him.

Her small fingers pressed against the bruises on his neck, drawing a surprised hiss of pain from Adam that made Ronan start forward before drawing back to glare, arms across over his broad chest, where he had leaned against the front door. Adam felt no spark or other sense of the supernatural beyond the flare of pain at the touch, but Calla’s gaze went distant for a moment, as though she were looking right through Adam, before she stepped back.

“Well?” Ronan snapped.

Calla shook her head. “We should move into the reading room.”

Maura stepped in before Ronan could say anything rude. “She’s right. Whatever this discussion becomes, the hallway isn’t the place for it.”

Adam nodded, and reached behind him to take Ronan’s hand properly in his own as they followed Maura and Calla to the reading room. Ronan swiped his thumb over the inside of Adam’s wrist, as if to check whether Adam were alright, and Adam squeezed his hand in response, hoping to convey reassurance. He noticed Maura observing them curiously - Adam and Ronan were rarely this affectionate around them, or anyone else besides their friends - and tried to ignore it.

Maura had redecorated the reading room since Adam’s last visit to Fox Way over Christmas, hanging gossamer curtains in a deep shade of navy blue that reminded Adam of the sky surrounding the moon at midnight. The fading sunlight filtering through them cast the room in stark pools of shadow, drawing sharp lines and valleys on their faces. The curtain fluttered with every thoughtless movement of the breeze, so that the shadows shifted, falling to pieces and being built again with every movement of the fabric until Adam felt as though he stood at the center of a shifting kaleidoscope. The pulse of the ley line felt stronger, too, as though rushing to welcome him home. The energy was a heady rush to his head, so that stepping into the room he was almost dizzy with it.

Calla and Maura walked around the table to sit across from Adam and Ronan.

“What did you see?” Adam asked Calla.

She shook her head. “Reading first.”

Before Adam could object, Maura asked, “Which deck?”

Figuring he wouldn’t get anything out of the psychics they weren’t willing to share, Adam reached into his back pocket, pulling out the deck of cards he had placed there and placing it on the table between them. “Persephone’s.”

Calla’s face didn’t change. “Sit.”

Adam walked forward, loosening his grip on Ronan’s hand as he walked until their fingers slipped apart. Ronan’s energy in particular, Adam knew, would confuse the reading, so Ronan stayed in the doorway, his large frame half-blocking the light from the hallway. Once Adam had taken his seat, Maura shuffled the deck - the movements of her hands practiced and without flourish - before spreading on the table in front of him.

“How many?” Adam asked.

“Three.”

Adam nodded, considering the cards in front of him. He let his hand hover over them, trying to let the electric current of the ley line guide his hand. The first card he chose felt like a spark of static electricity; he sought out that feeling again until he had three cards placed in front of him, evenly spaced.

Maura gestured for Adam to flip over the first card.

“The reversed tower,” she said, gazing at the card.

“Personal transformation and upheaval,” said Adam. “And self-instigated change.”

“Or questioning old belief systems,” Calla added, earning a raised eyebrow from Maura.

“I don’t really care about whatever personal problems,” said Adam.

Calla shrugged. ‘The cards do. You of all people know they show you what you need to see. Even if it’s not what you’re looking for.”

“And the personal could easily go beyond you in this case,” added Maura. “You’re connected to the ley line. It could have something to do with that.”

Adam nodded before reaching to flip over the next card. “Three of swords.”

“You’re deeply hurt,” Call intoned, in the sort of flat voice that dripped with sarcasm. “Pain, sadness, grief.”

“And relief,” countered Maura. “Experiencing suffering, expressing it, letting it flow through and out of you.”

Ronan’s lazy drawl came from the doorway. “So he just needs a good cry?”

Adam didn’t bother turning around. “Fuck off, Lynch.”

That finally coaxed a small smile out of Calla. “One more card, Magician.”

He flipped the third card.

“Death,” said Maura.

Adam felt as though the blood had suddenly frozen in his veins, but he fought to keep the expression from his face. Even after all he had learned about tarot cards, the card immediately brought Adam back to their first visit to Fox Way. He remembered the dread that had settled over the room during Gansey’s solo reading, just as it had when Blue had first described her meeting with Gansey on the corpse road.

He kept his voice perfectly even when he spoke. “Persephone called it the ‘open door.’ The end of some major era or aspect of your life, the renewal and transformation of being willing to let go of the past. Necessary endings.”

“Transformation again,” Maura observed passively.

Adam met her eyes across the table. “So what do you think it means?”

“Together?” Maura shrugged. “You’re more inscrutable that anyone else I’d do a reading for, so anything I can think of is going to be speculative at best. But it seems like you’re going to have to let go of some major hardship or trauma in your past, or some other kind of deadweight you’re clinging on to, and move forward into new era of your life.”

“Parrish has enough past traumas, at least,” Ronan offered from the doorway.

Adam ignored him for the moment. “But what does that have to do with my dreams?”

Maura looked to Calla. “What did you see?” she asked. “Maybe that’s the missing piece here.”

Calla pursed her lips. “I saw the thing that gave you those bruises - glimpses of it, anyway.”

Ronan stepped forward, suddenly alert. “What was it?” he demanded.

“Distorted,” said Calla. “Shifting and indefinite, like a memory only half remembered. Humanoid, but inhuman. Familiar, but nothing I’ve seen before - familiar to you, I think. It was embedded in your point of view, so that I couldn’t really get an objective look at it. Black, sunken eyes, dead but seeing.”

“Dead eyes?” asked Adam. “What does that mean?”

“They shouldn’t have been able to see,” Calla explained. “They were pitch black, completely, almost like they had physically rotted. But they could still see you, and it almost felt like they could see me.”

Maura frowned. “That’s not possible.”

“Neither is psychometry.”

Adam tried to push down his frustration. Even now, he still hated the uncertainty of magic, the subjective comprehensibility and fluidity of rules. “So what should I do?” he asked. “Do you know why it could hurt me in my dreams?”

Reluctantly, Calla shook her head. “No. We’ll research it, go through all our books, reach out to some contacts. You should do the same. Maybe ask your ringleader. He might’ve come across something like this in all his adventuring.”

“How do we keep him safe until then?” Ronan pressed, and Adam could hear the worry and desperation hidden under the sharp anger of his tone.

Calla looked unimpressed. “Hide him in your dreams,” she said. “You can’t enter his, but he can enter yours. And you’ve had control over your dreams since the end of everything with the Unmaker, right?”

Ronan nodded. “And that’s all we can do for now?”

“Protection spells couldn’t hurt,” offered Maura. “I know we told you a few for school, but I can give you some specifically meant for dreams.”

“Alright,” said Adam. He felt suddenly exhausted, the place where fear should have been emptied out and cold. ‘Thanks. Could you email me the spells, or do I need physical pages?”

“I can email them to you,” Maura told him. “But I have a certain candle I can give you, it’s meant to ward off nightmares…”

She looked distracted as she moved to leave the room, stopped to briefly sooth what Adam thought was meant to be a comforting touch over his cheek on the way out. The soft, cool touch of her fingers felt alien. He had grown used to Ronan’s calloused hands on him, but the comforting touch of a mother - the faint smell of lavender, the smoothness of her skin, the small wrinkle between Maura’s brows that Adam had only ever seen before when she talked to Blue - caught him completely off guard.

“Do you know what candle she means?” Adam asked Calla, just to have something to do.

“Just a white one, I think,” Calla answered. “We just get ours from a better supplier than, like, Yankee Candle, so less interference for spells. Dream spells tend to be fairly straightforward, but your case is different than most, and with a Dreamer involved we want to keep the elements as uncomplicated as possible.”

Adam merely nodded. “Anything else?”

Calla shrugged. “I’d say pray, but I’m not exactly the religious type.”


	3. Before Bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two chapters at once! second one from Ronan's POV - my first time writing him

Adam was quiet as he got ready for bed. The silver bracelet clasped around his wrist seemed determined to inconvenience him, snagging on his T-shirt as he pulled it over his head and jangling obnoxiously as he brushed his teeth, but Maura had insisted he wear it to sleep that night, as an anchor to the protection spell she had showed him. It reminded him of the expensive watches his classmates at Harvard and Aglionby wore so carelessly, redundant to the cell phones they so often shattered and replaced. He wondered if that association was what made the bracelet’s weight seem awkward on his wrist, when Ronan’s leather wristband felt so comfortable that Adam could almost forget he wore it somtimes.

Ronan took longer than usual putting Opal to bed, returning to the bedroom just after eleven with a weary slump to his shoulders.

Adam spit his mouthful of toothpaste into the sink and called from the bathroom, “She more restless than usual?”

Ronan pulled his shirt off before he answered. “Brat can sense that I’m anxious. She can’t tell why, but it’s making her anxious too. Not sure if that’s some Greywaren-dream psychic link bullshit or just her not liking that she doesn’t get what’s going on, but it took forever to convince her to go to sleep. I just don’t want her to get the idea in her head that she has to worry about your nightmares now, too, but she’s in like, a fucking feedback loop off my anxiety.”

“Sounds like you need to calm down then,” Adam remarked dryly.

“And how would you suggest I do that?”

“Xanax?”

Ronan gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Last thing I need is an addiction.”

Adam placed his toothbrush back in the cup by the sink and walked over to sit on the edge bed, watching Ronan move around the room - cursing under his breath the whole way - as he struggled out of his jeans. “You don’t get an addiction from one pill,” he told Ronan matter-of-factly.

“I’ve got an addictive personality already, so it seems like tempting fate or whatever shit. Plus, I’m probably still technically an alcoholic.”

“So were half the guys on my hall this year.”

Ronan finally managed to pull his pant leg from around his foot, so that he stood triumphantly in the middle of the room in his underwear. Adam didn’t bother to disguise the way his eyes traced over his boyfriend’s body, following the lines of the tattoo where they curled around his neck and over his broad shoulders.

“I figured Harvard would be more cocaine,” Ronan said with faux seriousness, bringing Adam’s attention back to his face. “A bunch of rich fucks tired of drinking once its not taboo anymore.”

Adam laughed. “Says the rich boy adrenaline junkie.”

Turning away for a moment, Adam reached over into the bag he had propped against the side of the bed, and dug around blindly inside until he found Maura’s candle. He stood up to place it on the nightstand, careful so that it wouldn’t fall over.

He heard Ronan’s heavy steps as he came up to stand behind Adam, leaning back into his boyfriend’s chest as Ronan’s arms wrapped around his waist.

“Do you need a lighter?”

Adam almost shook his head, but stopped himself, wary of dislodging Ronan from where he had propped his chin on Adam’s shoulder. “I’ve got it.”

He closed his eyes and focused on the ley line, so strong at the Barns, the pulse of it like a second heartbeat in the hollow place in his chest, and directed it into his hands. He imagined a flame: small, blue, and steady. He imagined the heat of it against his palms, but the skin there unburnt. He imagined the small shadows, flickering just a bit as the flame held steady and straight. When he opened his eyes, the flame was cupped where he had curled his hands protectively around it.

As Adam gently placed the flame on the wick, Ronan turned his head to place a small series of chaste kisses behind Adam’s ear, his stubble scraping against the soft skin there and sending a shiver down the back of Adam’s neck. All he said, though, was: “That better not get wax on my nightstand.

Adam rolled his eyes. “It’s a magical flame. It won’t.”

“Candle’s not magical,” Ronan argued. “The psychics just said it’ll be better for magic rituals, because its just wax without scents and shit mixed up in it.”

“The nightstand will be fine,” Adam told him. “Now get off me. I still have to write the spell out before I can even start scrying.”

Ronan placed one more kiss to the side of Adam’s neck before prying himself off and grabbing his silky headphones on the way to the bathroom. Over his shoulder, he called, “Hurry up then! I’m tired!”

Adam ignored him, choosing to take his time rather than rush this most crucial step. He wrote the spell in careful, precise letters in his leather-bound journal. It had been a Christmas gift from Gansey, obtained from some mage in Columbia, though Gansey had used another word, something in Spanish Adam couldn’t remember; he was better with Latin. Adam had nearly illegible handwriting when he took notes for classes or jotted down a reminder for himself, but he forced himself to move his hand in slow, deliberate strokes as he wrote out the spell, barely finishing by the time Ronan emerged from the bathroom, still wiping at the remnants toothpaste foam with the back of his hand. He placed the headphones back on his own nightstand.

“All set?” he asked, sitting next to Adam on the bed so that their legs were pressed against each other.

Adam closed the journal. “Yeah. Now I just have to place it under my pillow, and hope it works.”

Ronan raised an eyebrow - a gesture Adam found aristocratic it both its handsomeness and casual arrogance, though he thought Ronan would dislike the characterization. He usually preferred “ridiculously wealthy asshole.”

“That sounds uncomfortable,” Ronan said.

“Less so that dream monsters,” replied Adam, with a sort of flippant efficiency. It seemed an obvious trade off to sleep a bit uncomfortably in order to sleep safely.

“Fair point.” A beat, and then, “Do you have your scrying shit?”

“In my bag.” He leaned away from Ronan to dig through to bag again, emerging with with his worn set of tarot cards.

Ronan regarded the deck warily, but seemed to bite his tongue rather than comment on Adam’s ‘demon magic bullshit.’ 

Adam’s relationship to magic remained complicated. He’d begun as a devout skeptic, eager for the adventure, camaraderie, and ease of being that joining Gansey’s band of merrymen and his quest for Glendower offered. His transition to becoming the hands and eyes of Cabeswater, the Magician by the most nebulous and intuitive of understandings, had been abrupt and jarring, forcing Adam to learn on his feet. Even now, it still didn’t feel like enough to override years of brutally logical thinking, of a narrow focus on the practical at the expense of the fanciful. He still sometimes instinctively balked at the daydreams and abstracts which hadn’t become accessible to him until so very, painfully recently. He struggled to understand Ronan because of it sometimes; his boyfriend represented the farthest thing from the practical that Adam could picture.

Adam combined the pragmatic and the unfathomable, but the way to fit those fractured pieces together still often eluded his grasp. Something like lighting the candle he could convince himself was logical. Creating a sensory picture in his head, directing the ever-present power of the ley line, manifesting the flame; steps one, two, three, straightforward and sequential, despite the violations of the laws of physics. But scrying, as often as Adam had done it, still vexed him. Scrying was more intuitive, requiring Adam to trust his own sense of magic. Being good at scrying could not be simply a result of practice. Overthinking could completely block Adam from scrying, if he tried too hard to force that connection. His intentionality and discipline, which had made him valedictorian of Aglionby and gained him acceptance and honors at Harvard, became not just useless, but counterproductive.

Ronan made it easier. In Cabeswater or at the Barns, with Ronan, Adam could sometimes feel as though scrying were the same as falling asleep. Being good at scrying, Adam thought, was the same as being good at love. Love came easily to people like Gansey, who had always been surrounded by it, confident in their ability to give it and their worthiness to receive it. For Adam, love for so long had been a desperate dream, a need like a physical, ravenous ache in his chest. When he had first discovered it - and his own capacity for it - Adam had treated it as something fragile, a jealously guarded privilege that he had finally been able to claim as his own, however undeserving he sometimes still felt.

Adam had become good at scrying because he so desperately wanted and needed it, loved it and cherished it and held it close to the core of himself as something precious. If he could relax his anxiety and doubts enough to sink into intuitively, he thought he could just fall asleep tonight and scry himself into Ronan’s dreams. It was rather like being in a relationship with Ronan Lynch. At first, Adam had treated it as something fearful and dangerous, as something to regard with a certain degree of caution and wariness. And Adam still treated Ronan and their relationship with reverence and care, but being with Ronan had over time developed the same easy rhythm as breathing, so long as Adam didn’t get too into his own head. He could reach out to touch Ronan, call him at three in the morning for comfort, tease Ronan and let down his own guard, with unthinking dependence that Ronan would not shake off the touch, would answer the phone, would burn down the world before intentionally hurting Adam.

So Adam pulled a card without thinking, and was somehow unsurprised when he found the Magician staring back at him. He regarded it for a moment before tucking the card in the journal where he had written the spell, and then leaning back to stuff the journal under the pillow on his side of the bed.

“Can you get the lights?” he asked Ronan, saccharine smile plastered on his face.

Ronan rolled his eyes. “You’re lucky I like you, Parrish,” he groaned, standing up. He snagged a maroon T-shirt on the way - emblazoned with the Harvard logo, Adam would have bet all of his meager savings - and pulled it over his head.

Adam didn’t bother hiding the grin from his face as he crawled into his spot on the bed. The lights flipped off, and for a moment Ronan was only a tall shadow, moving clumsily through the dark until he collapsed half on top of Adam. He could feel Ronan groping blindly for a moment before finding Adam’s hands, and bringing them up to his lips.

“You got this?” Ronan asked, his voice quieter and softer in the darkness.

“Yeah,” Adam said, nodding although Ronan couldn’t see him. “I just need to… not think, and scrying becomes so easy.”

“So you need me to help you not think?” Ronan asked, a bit of innuendo coloring his tone.

Adam laughed. “Not like that, necessarily. Just be here, or whatever. You… I’m calm around you. I can breathe. And usually I can sleep. I don’t start spiraling into overthinking and anxiety when you’re here.”

“Good,” Ronan said thickly, and then cleared his throat. “Because it’s my fucking bed, so I wasn’t planning on moving. And you need to shut that big brain of yours down sometime.”

He kissed Adam, his breath still minty from the toothpaste and rough stubble scraping against Adam’s chin and mouth. Adam let himself melt into Ronan’s body, breathing in the intoxicating scent of his soap and his aftershave and of Ronan. Then Ronan adjusted his grip around Adam’s waist, manhandling Adam until Adam’s back was flush against his broad chest and tucking his head behind Adam’s neck. Their legs, still the long, lanky limbs of barely-adults, tangled together at the end of the bed.

“We’re spooning?” Adam asked, amused.

“I thought you wanted to be surrounded by my presence or whatever shit.”

In lieu of an answer, Adam brought Ronan’s hands to his own lips, kissing them softly before returning their hands to the mattress, their fingers tangled together. He felt Ronan smile against the back of his neck.

“You owe me morning sex,” Ronan warned, shifting so that their bodies were, impossibly, even closer together. “I haven’t gotten any since fucking spring break. My patience won’t last must longer.”

“‘Serva me, servabo te,’ hon,” Adam told him pleasantly, which drew another laugh from Ronan.

“I don’t think my saving you from fucking murderous dream monsters is on the same level as you saving me from blue balls.”

Adam didn’t say anything in reply, instead closing his eyes and willing himself to fall asleep with the reassuring, physical weight of Ronan curled around him protectively.

“It’s easier for me, too,” he heard Ronan whisper, just as he was about to nod off. “I sleep better when you’re here.”

Unable to resist a bit of snark, Adam told him, “Then do it, so I can actually get some sleep, too.” And then, “I love you.”

“Love you too, asshole,” and it came as an exhale on the back of Adam’s neck.

In what felt like a just the space of a few heartbeats, Adam was asleep.


	4. A Dreamer and a Dream

Ronan dreamed of Cabeswater.

Not Cabeswater as it was in the present, still half-built and careful, the product of a Greywaren terrified of overdrawing the ley line, but Cabeswater as it was in the wildest, most beautiful and terrifying dreams that Ronan had become too cautious to bring back with him when he woke up. Bringing Adam to see this place, at least, seemed almost as good as bringing this place out of his mind. But his Cabeswater wasn’t safe. It represented the absolute limits of Ronan’s imagination, which had in the past included horrors that had nearly killed Adam and everyone else they knew. The ugliest, rawest parts of Ronan embedded themselves in everything here, as inextricable from his dreams as peeling the thorns from a rose. He didn’t think he could bear watching even Adam see those most deeply buried parts of himself, the jealousies and insecurities and fears he usually covered with rashness and temper and irreverence. Adam was too beautiful, too precious, to bring him into the totality of Ronan’s dreams

But Ronan could create pockets, at least for a bit. He imagined a small, sheltered place, protected and unfamiliar and secret, and made just for Adam, for this one dream. For one night, he could preserve its beauty from the nightmares entangled with everything else in his mind. He tried to translate how he felt about Adam - the nebulous, overwhelming chaos of emotion, the ocean flooded with oil and set ablaze in an uncontrollable maelstrom - into the scenery he crafted around himself as he waited for Adam to arrive.

When Adam finally appeared, he looked more like himself that he usually did in Ronan’s dreams. Dream-Adam tended to be tanner and more freckled, with smile lines at the corners of his eyes and an easy, elastic grin. Adam as he had scryed into Ronan’s dreams stood a little more hunched, his skin paler with the purpling bags under his eyes and the ring of bruises around his neck dark against his skin. Ronan wanted nothing more than to kiss away the bruises, to kiss Adam’s summer freckles back across his cheeks and arms.

Instead, from where he lay in the plush grass, arms folded behind his head, Ronan greeted him, “Yo, Parrish. Took you long enough.”

“You’re snoring made it harder for me to fall asleep,” Adam shot back half-heartedly, but his attention had been caught by the meadow around them. A look of wonder had softened his face, relaxing the tension he’d been carrying in his shoulders since coming back from Boston. Ronan knew he was staring, but didn’t bother to stop himself. He’d been captivated by Adam from the first moment Ronan had seen him, and felt he could drown in watching Adam now that he finally had him back.

Ronan smiled. “Close your mouth, babe, you’ll catch flies.”

“You dreamt bugs into your perfect world?” Adam asked, sounding still a bit in awe as he finally returned his gaze to Ronan.

“Fuck no.” Or at least, not in this temporary corner.

“Did you dream all of this tonight?”

“Yeah. Well, this part at least.”

“It’s beautiful,” Adam told him, his face painfully earnest and open as he so rarely allowed it to be when they were awake. “This is… so, so beautiful.”

Stalks of lilac shot up interspersed among grass as soft and cool to the touch as silk. The field stretched on as far as their sight went, ringed at the very edges of what they could see by purplish mountains, dark against the watercolor streaks of pink painted across the sky, from which light shone despite there being no sun. Instead, thousands of stars dotted the expanse, in swirling galaxies and fantastic constellations and meteors streaking across the sunset. Glowing butterflies, their wings traced in luminescent violet, drifted lazily over the ground.

Ronan didn’t bother to fight the smile that spread across his face. “Come enjoy it then,” he told Adam, motioning with his chin toward the space next to him in the grass.

Adam stayed on his feet. “Is it safe? To draw on it this much, just to make all of this for me?”

“I’m not really drawing on it unless I bring anything out with me.” Ronan held out his hand, as if he could grab Adam’s from where he lay on the ground. “Come here.”

Finally, Adam complied, stretching himself out on the grass with his head pillowed on Ronan’s chest. Ronan couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so content.

“Did you dream at all?” he asked Adam. “Before this?”

“No,” Adam answered. “I think I came straight here.”

“Good.” Leaving one arm tucked under his head, Ronan reached with his other hand to comb his fingers through Adam’s hair. He remarked, “You need better conditioner. The fuck are you using, Suave?”

“It’s cheaper.”

Ronan scoffed. “I can tell. I’ll dream you up something better.”

“Ronan,” Adam said warningly.

“Fine,” Ronan relented, rolling his eyes, “I’ll buy it for you.”

“You think I’d be more likely to agree to that?”  
“You’re not likely to fucking agree to anything, you obstinate asshole,” Ronan told him. “But you’ve also gotten better about accepting gifts without more bitching than necessary. Not like I’m trying to buy you a fucking Rolex or some expensive shit. It’s gonna be good conditioner, not that expensive but not something you’d be willing to buy yourself. Fucking… Treseme, or whatever, some shit that’s actually good for your hair.”

Adam sighed. “You’re real determined to be vain on my behalf, aren’t you?”

Ronan flicked Adam lightly on the head in retaliation. “Consider it selfish on my part. I want you to look nice.”

He moved to keep running his fingers through Adam’s hair, but before he could Adam had sat halfway up, leaning over Ronan as he propped himself up one arm.

“Asshole,” he laughed, his smile bright and easy and wonderful as it spread across his face. Ronan delighted in drawing those sorts of smiles out of Adam: slightly crooked teeth and chapped lips and the way his eyes seemed to light up as he stared down at Ronan. Adam’s smiles had become easier and wider since he and Ronan had started dating, and more frequent, he thought. Maybe this smile was a consequence of the isolated, intimate arena of the dream, but Ronan hoped it was due, at least in part, to his own presence, too.

So Ronan reached up, aligning his hand with the sharp line of Adam’s jaw before leaning up to kiss him. They kissed like that for a while, unrushed and lazy in the timelessness of the dream. At some point, Adam shifted position to straddle Ronan’s waist, drawing Ronan’s eager hands to reach up under the hem of Adam’s shirt, eager for as much touch as he was allowed. Adam trailed kisses up and down Ronan’s neck and the exposed bits of his collar bone, following them with sharp bites that drew needy whines from the back of Ronan’s throat.

“Fuck,” he groaned, when Adam bit at a particularly sensitive spot just below the corner of his jaw. “Jesus Christ, Parrish.”

He grabbed Adam’s waist and, in one easy move - just a bit smoother than he’d ever been awake - flipped them over, so that he was propped over Adam on his elbows, one knee planted by Adam’s hip and the other between his legs so that Ronan could feel him, half-hard, against his thigh. The move earned another smile from Adam before Ronan leaned in to kiss him again, a hot, open-mouthed kiss that seemed to steal all the breath from his body. He could feel Adam’s teeth scrape against his lip, could feel Adam’s cock straining, insistent against Ronan’s thigh, through his jeans.

Adam seemed to kiss him back thoughtlessly, all instinct, frantic and hot, his body grinding up against Ronan’s and his nails dragging sharp lines down Ronan’s back. Ronan focused on re-familiarizing himself with the the lines of Adam’s body, the scrape of his stubble, the taste of his kiss. Ronan had missed Adam more than he thought he could put into words. He didn’t know how long they had been kissing before Adam finally pulled away, his lips swollen and bruised from kissing. Still a bit dazed, Ronan chased his lips, earning a last, chaste peck before Adam drew back fully and let his head fall back on the grass.

“What’s wrong?” Ronan asked, staring down at Adam. His voice came out rough, sticking a bit in his throat as he tried to re-gather his thoughts.

Adam looked far more clear-headed. “We should take advantage of being here before we wake up, try to figure out what attacked me in my dreams. You can manifest things in here, so I thought maybe if I focused on the memory of the monster that attacked me, maybe I could make a model of it?”

“You fucking kidding me?” Ronan demanded, though without much actual bite. “Some monster tried to kill you in your dreams so you want to try to recreate that shit here?”

Adam stared back up at him, defiant by nature despite the softness lingering in his expression. “I just… I need to know what it is, Ronan. As much as I’d love to just hide in your dreams forever, I’m gonna need to go back into my own head eventually, and I don’t want to get stuck being terrified that if I take a nap, or accidentally doze off, I’ll be attacked.”

“But what if you actually summon that… fucking, whatever monster attacked you?” Ronan asked, and he could hear the fear and desperation bleeding into his own voice, though he thought to Adam it probably sounded more like anger. “You’re… We’re just supposed to hide out here, keep you safe for now. That’s what the fucking psychics said. We’re not supposed to go looking to bring more monsters in here.”

Adam reached up, cupping Ronan’s cheek in his hand and swiping the pad of his thumb across Ronan’s cheekbone. Ronan leaned into the touch, seeking out whatever comfort he could to stop the suddenly frantic racing of his heart.

“I don’t want to summon the actual creature,” Adam assured him, speaking softly. “I just… I need to know. This is the safest place to try to figure it out. Like a laboratory environment, almost. We can be safe here, or safe as we can be, because you control everything here.”

“But your monster isn’t like normal dreams,” Ronan argued. “It’s… fuck, we don’t even know what it is! It might not actually be a dream creature. And it’s not like I haven’t lost control of the shit in my dreams before!”

“You’re in control here,” said Adam soothingly. “This place is completely perfect and peaceful.”

“This is just one corner!” Ronan shouted back; Adam flinched.

Ronan shut his mouth abruptly, stopping what he had been about to say and taking a deep breath for a moment, before sitting up. He extricated himself from Adam to sit on the grass about a foot away. Adam followed his lead slowly, sitting upright beside Ronan. “Fuck, I- Sorry, fuck, I didn’t mean to yell.”

Adam shook his head slowly, as if clearing out unwanted thoughts. “I… Don’t be,” he said, drawing his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms tightly around them. “I didn’t mean to push.”

“Hey,” Ronan told him, “I’m not mad. I’m sorry I yelled, I just… Something that can hurt you in your dreams, something neither of us understand, scares the shit out of me. I don’t know how I can protect you, even here.”

“I don’t need you to protect me,” Adam snapped, almost reflexively.

“You need something,” Ronan replied, careful to hold back some of the emotion threatening to flood into his words. “I know you want to face things alone, and I’m not going to stop you, with shit where I know how capable you are, but this is something different. This is something terrifying, and impossible, and it nearly killed you already. So if you’re not going to bother to keep yourself safe, than of fucking course I’m going to try to.”

“Ronan-“ said Adam, but Ronan wasn’t finished.

“We’re in this together, alright? That’s what the whole point of being in a relationship is. You can’t do everything alone, and you don’t have to anymore. If I can help you, at least when it’s something this serious, you need to let me.”

Adam’s head sank forward so that his forehead resting on his knees. “I just… I can’t stand not knowing. It feels like its eating away at me from the inside, this terror that I have no idea how to even conceptualize. Whatever information I can get, I need to know.”

Ronan allowed himself a deep, shuddering breath. “Alright,” he said, and he could feel the tears beginning in the corner of his eyes before brushing them brusquely away. “Just, wait until tomorrow night, please? Gansey and Sargent will be back by then. We can talk to them about this tomorrow, see if they’ve heard of anything like this. If you still want to summon your dream monster into my fucking head after that, we can do it with people watching us outside, just in case… fuck, in case something goes wrong. If we’re gonna do this shit, we should have someone standing by to wake us up if we need them to.”

Adam lifted his head slowly, as though it weighed a thousand pounds, and managed to nod. Ronan could see tear tracks down he cheeks, and had to fight the urge to reach out and wipe them away, or dream up a tissue.

“I’m so scared,” he admitted to Ronan, his voice nearly a whisper, like it were as painful for Adam to speak as it had been when Ronan had picked him up at the airport that morning. “Ronan, I’m so fucking scared. I just feel… completely out of control. There’s this mortal danger hanging over my head whenever I fall asleep, and I don’t even fucking know enough about it to be able to do anything. I’m just, just completely helpless, and I hate… I hate being trapped back in that feeling.”

“I know,” Ronan told him. “I am too. But for now, there’s honestly fucking nothing we can do but hide out in here. I know you don’t want to do that anymore, but as much as I want to fight whatever hurt you, we can’t just run in blind.”

Adam managed a watery laugh. “I feel like we’ve entirely switched positions,” he told Ronan. “I used to just want to put my head down and get through it, at h- when I was in the trailer. You were the one charging in and assaulting my dad. I figured you’d want to fight this, too.”

“Of course I do,” Ronan told him, as earnest as he had ever been. “And if it was just me at risk, I’d do it in a fucking heartbeat. Your scumbag dad… that was an instinct, more than anything. I knew he hurt you, but this was the first time I’d actually seen it, and I just… snapped, because I couldn’t just sit on my ass and see you get hurt like that. I saw you on the ground, and the way he- And I just had to do anything I could to stop him. When you called me last night, or I saw your bruises this morning, my first instinct was to punch something. But… shit, we can’t just act on instinct here! As long as you can scry into my dreams and be safe, we have time to step back and figure this out, to realize what we’re going into before we just, just fucking charge in and start trying to punch dream horrors. If I could just risk myself, honestly, I’d have done it already, no matter how fucking stupid it was, and I’d probably have gotten myself killed. But I can’t let myself risk you when we have no idea what the fuck we’re even up against.”

Adam looked shellshocked, as though Ronan had smacked him upside the head with a baseball bat. Ronan shifted a bit under the scrutiny.

“Ronan…” Adam began, but he didn’t seem to know how to finish the thought.

“Don’t look so surprised, Jesus,” Ronan told him. “You know I have basic fucking common sense, and you know I love you, so I really don’t know why you look like I just spouted fucking wings or some shit.”

“I just… You’re not exactly a verbal guy, usually. Of course I know you love me, but I’m more used to grand gestures and… hand cream from your dreams, thoughtful shit like that. Hearing it all said aloud like that… It’s just a massive one eighty from this like cold terror in my chest, like I’ve been having an anxiety attack for the past twenty four hours, and I just feel… just, like, raw right now.” Adam must have seen the look on Ronan’s face, because he added hastily, “It’s not bad! I’m just… I’m overwhelmed, is all. I’m scared out of my mind, and exhausted, and I’m pissed that I’m freaking you out so much and putting all my shit on you, and I love you, a ridiculous amount, and I should just be so blissfully happy that I can finally stop missing you but I can’t turn my goddamn brain off-“

“Parrish,” Ronan interrupted him gently, reaching out to grab Adam’s hand. “Jesus, babe, deep breaths. Don’t ever fucking worry about putting your shit on me, alright? Something this big, you can’t worry about it on your own. You already do enough of that shit. And me freaking out is par for the fucking course. Shutting me out isn’t gonna stop me from fucking worrying about you, it’s just gonna make me more paranoid and less helpful. So cut that kind of shit thinking out.”

Adam took a deep breath. “I… Yeah, okay. I just need to clear my head, stop thinking for a while.”

“Loud music usually does that for me,” Ronan offered. “Or painting?”

“Painting?” Adam asked, and Ronan noticed the little quirk upward at the corner of his lips.

“Sargent got me into it, with those classes last year. You really need to focus, or whatever shit. It helped get me out of my own head, sometimes.”

“I don’t know what would work for me,” Adam admitted. “Usually when I’m anxious I’m so busy with school or work or Gansey shit I don’t even have time to think about it, but now I feel like it’s the only thing I can think about, and I can’t make it stop.”

“What about driving?” Ronan offered. “That’s what I do when I’m pissed or whatever. We could dream up some cars, or motorcycles, fucking helicopters if you want. Or dragons if you wanna go full Daenerys on this place-"Adam laughed. “I’m not burning down your meadow.”

Ronan shrugged. “I’ve heard fire is cleansing.”

“Speaking as an aspiring or experienced arsonist there?”

“Fuck off,” Ronan told him, but he was laughing, too.

He stood up, brushing grass off his jeans, before reaching out his hand to help Adam to his feet.

“C’mon Parrish,” Ronan told him, as he dragged Adam up to stand beside him. “Unlimited dream landscape. We’ve gotta be able to find you a healthy coping mechanism.”

Adam smiled, sweet and easy and with little smile lines at the corners of his mouth, just like he usually did in Ronan’s dreams. Ronan’s chest felt restless and warm, like he couldn’t contain the rush of happiness that Adam’s smile sparked in him, and he tried to take it as a sign that everything would be alright.


	5. Gansey the Dreamer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue and an exhausted Gansey arrive at the Barns

They ate a late breakfast, because Ronan had looked at the heartbreaking exhaustion etched into Adam’s face even in the dream, and tried to keep them inside it for as long as he could. But eventually they had to wake up, when Chainsaw’s impatient cawing at the window made it impossible to sleep any more. Opal rushed into the room only moments later, jumping excitedly on the end of the bed as she ordered them to get up.

“Breakfast time!” Opal insisted, peering up at them with wide blue eyes. Tufts of blonde hair poked out from underneath her skull cap - grimy and smudged with fingerprints, so Ronan made a mental note that to have Adam coax it away from her later so that he could wash it - and she held Adam’s broken old watch clasped tightly in one small fist.

Adam managed a grunt from where he had buried his head under his pillow, but Ronan sat up, taking the watch from Opal and fastening the clasp around her wrist. He didn’t let her wear it to sleep, so he was used to this first, urgent demand every morning. Ronan had managed to convince her to give up the watch at night by taking off his leather bracelets before bed in turn. So he wasn’t too surprised when Opal pointed at the identical bracelet around Adam’s wrist with a concerned pout. The hand with the silver bracelet was buried under the pillow with Adam’s head and his journal.

“Why he allowed?” she demanded petulantly.

Ronan decided it was too early for him to have to deal with this. “Yeah, Parrish, why are you allowed to wear bracelets to bed and Opal can’t?”

With a muffled groan, Adam pulled the pillow off his head and stared up at them. His hair was rumpled mess that Ronan had to restrain himself from combing into place with his fingers. Adam sat halfway up so that he could face Opal, who hadn’t turned her unnerving gaze away from his face.

“I don’t have Ronan at school,” Adam told her, meeting her wide-eyed stare. His voice was still thick and mumbling from grogginess. “I wear my bracelets all the time because they’re from him, and I miss him when I’m gone. I can’t get up and come in here when I have bad dreams or I’m scared, so I have these instead, and they protect me from everything at night - just like you used to protect Ronan in his dreams.”

Ronan fought to keep some ridiculously sappy emotion from his face, biting his tongue so hard he worried he’d taste blood.

“Lame,” he said. Opal and Adam both ignored him.

“We miss you,” Opal told Adam earnestly, earning a fond half-smile.

“Now you don’t have to anymore,” Adam told her, reaching out to smooth the stray hairs poking out from under her cap. “I’m back, for a while. Why don’t you go get dressed, okay? We need to shower, and then we can all have breakfast together.’

Opal broke out in a wide, crooked-toothed grin. “Hurry!” she insisted, before running out of the room, her hooves unencumbered by the boots Ronan insisted she wear outside the Barns.

“I call first shower,” Adam told Ronan once she was gone, moving to get out of bed.

Ronan grabbed him before he could, wrapping his fingers loosely around Adam’s arm just below the elbow.

“Thought the deal was sweet dreams last night and then morning sex when we woke up?” He raised his eyebrow in the way he knew Adam thought made him look like an asshole - which Ronan admitted readily enough - because he liked seeing the blush it brought to the tops of Adam’s cheeks.

“I don’t think Opal’s gonna give us that much time, hon,” Adam told him, a bit of a smirk to his lips as he leaned into Ronan’s space so that their lips nearly touched. Ronan rather liked seeing Adam confident: comfortable and cocky and gorgeous even while rumpled from sleep.

“Your breath stinks,” Ronan informed him, leaning in the rest of the distance for a kiss, but Adam pulled away before Ronan could even part his lips.

“Then don’t kiss me,” Adam said.

“Stop being hot then,” Ronan retorted. “How about a compromise: we shower together and I lock the door on the brat?”

Adam laughed. “You’re not worried she’ll eat the door?”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

An eye roll. “Fine. We do have to be fast though. I think Gansey and them will be here around noon.”

“So just a blowjob, then.”

“And what if I don’t really feel like getting on my knees right now?”

Ronan tilted his head to kiss his way up Adam’s jaw until his lips were pressed at the shell of Adam’s ear. He could feel the way Adam’s body trembled against him.

“Who said you’d be the one on your knees?” Ronan whispered, lascivious and utterly unable to stop his own smirk.

Adam kissed him on the lips, short and fierce and dizzying, before suddenly pulling away and jumping to his feet, reaching out for Ronan’s hand to drag Ronan behind him to the bathroom. Ronan let himself be pulled eagerly, utterly content to follow Adam’s lead - in this, at least.

* * *

The Camero roared up to the Barns just after noon, the sound of the engine rumbling off the veritable forest that Ronan had dreamt up to line the mile-long driveway between the Barns and the road. Adam and Ronan lounged on the front steps, their empty coffee mugs abandoned behind them. Opal had spent the past half hour alternating between digging up weeds and flowers from the front garden, and had been nibbling occasionally on the flower petals despite Ronan’s half-hearted admonishments. At the sound of the car, her head popped up, an excited grin breaking over her face.

“Uncle Dick!” Opal exclaimed, running off toward the driveway before Adam and Ronan could even begin to stand up.

“Don’t get run over!” Ronan yelled after her.

“She calls him Dick now?” Adam asked, amused.

“That’s his name, isn’t it?”

Blue emerged from the Pig first, opening the heavy driver’s side door with a visible effort. Her style had become somewhat less eccentric since she’d begun school in California and created distance from her house full of psychics. In a pair of shredded, marker-stained overall shorts, knee high socks with Converse Adam recognized as a good will find from the previous summer, and some sort of gossamer shirt in a pale shade of green that made her skin look even darker than normal, Adam still thought she looked rather pretty. Blue had let her hair grow out at school, as Adam knew from their biweekly FaceTime sessions, so that it was now long enough to pull into a ponytail tipped in pale pink.

When she saw Adam and Ronan standing up to greet them, her face split into a wide grin and she was running toward them nearly before Adam could react, throwing herself into Adam’s arms with nearly enough force to knock him off his feet. When he straightened up, his height was enough that he lifted her clean off the ground, earning a sound somewhere between a delighted laugh and an indignant squawk.

“Put me down!” Blue demanded, but she had a massive grin on her face when Adam did. “I’ve missed you!”

Adam smiled back. “I’ve missed you too.”

“And Lynch,” she added, her smile undiminished despite Ronan’s own lack of enthusiasm. “Don’t worry, you get a hug, too.”

“Thank the Lord,” Ronan deadpanned, but he hugged Blue back when she threw her arms around his waist, the top her head barely coming up to his shoulder.

“Hello!” came Gansey’s voice from the Camero, as the boy himself finally emerged from the far side of the car, a delighted Opal in his arms trying to take a bite of his hair.

Gansey wore his wire frame glasses, the ones that made him look more human than test tube president, and a polo shirt in some garnish shade of turquoise. His smile stretched broadly across his face, but Gansey had bags under his eyes - darker even than Adam’s - that sent a pulse of worry like a shot of adrenaline to Adam’s pulse. He tried to push his anxiety aside, though, because he had missed Gansey fiercely, and thought he should be entitled to at least a few moments of happiness with his friends before another supernatural shit storm upended their lives.

Ronan got to their friend first, offering a one-armed hug as he transitioned a petulant Opal from Gansey’s arms into his own.

“Welcome back,” Ronan offered as he settled Opal on his hip. “Thought we might’ve lost you to the west coast.”

Gansey scoffed. “Never. More new age crystals and horoscopes than genuine magic out there. Stanford’s a lovely school, but I can’t see myself putting down roots somewhere so…”

“Modern?” Blue offered teasingly.

Gansey’s look of annoyance, Adam thought, was entirely too compromised by fondness to be effective. “So West Egg,” Gansey offered instead, as if that were a reasonable description of California. “Empty glamour and bottomless ambition.”

Adam stepped forward before Blue could say anything to that.

“Hey, Gansey,” he said, returning Gansey’s offered embrace. “Good to have you back.”

“Excellent to be back,” Gansey answered. “Henrietta will always draw me back, I think. One way or another. Though I can’t imagine Jane ever putting down roots, here or anywhere.”

Blue scrunched up her nose a bit. “We’ve got too much of the world left to see before then.”

“Where’s Cheng?” Ronan asked, not looking particularly invested in the answer.

“Croatia,” Gansey answered. “Some sort of boating escapade with his friends from Caltech. He plans to visit later next week, I believe.”

“We should go to Croatia next,” Blue mused.

“I’ve heard it’s a beautiful spot,” Gansey said agreeably, “Though perhaps best experienced with a bit less raucousness than Henry typically enjoys.”

Ronan smirked. “I’m starting to get what you see in Cheng.”

“Adam,” interrupted Blue suddenly, stepping toward him. “Jesus, what happened to your neck?”

Without thinking, Adam raised his hand to the bruises there, but he cast a wary glance at Opal before he answered. “We actually wanted to talk to you about that,” he said carefully.

“I suspect we’ll have a lot to discuss,” Gansey said graveky. He turned his tanned forearm over to reveal a similar set of bruises to Adam’s, dark fingerprints like inkblots beginning near the crook of his elbow and reaching nearly to his wrist, though Gansey’s bruises had already started turning a greenish hue at the edges.

Ronan swore.

“Hey!” Blue admonished him.

Opal stuck out her tongue. “Malus,” she said.

Ronan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, dollar in the swear jar, I know. Why don’t you go get your game set up, huh? You can show Uncle Dick and Sargent how good you’ve gotten.”

Opal looked skeptical, but apparently Ronan’s offer was sufficiently tempting, because she squirmed her way out of his arms to run inside.

“She’s really into Minecraft,” Ronan told them, as if that were the most relevant information at that moment. “She’s trying to build the Barns, but it’s not the most literal interpretation.”

They all ignored him.

“You got that in a dream,” Gansey said, addressing Adam. His spoke with weight - nearly the same cadence as he’d used to awaken dead animals so many months before. “When?”

“Last night,” Adam told him. “Something tried to kill me in my dream, but I woke up before it could.”

“That’s not how my dreams worked,” Ronan interjected, and this time they all turned to listen to him. “When something wanted to kill me, I couldn’t wake up. I had to hide and wait until I was safe. That’s why I needed Opal.”

“My dream was three nights ago,” Gansey told them, with a rueful little smile. “I haven’t let myself sleep since. That’s part of why Jane drove.”

“Jesus,” said Ronan, looking as angry as Adam had ever seen him. “You’re not gonna be able to keep that up much longer. Why the fuck didn’t you call us?”

“Why didn’t you call?” Blue countered.

Ronan scowled. “We had a plan. We went to the psychics yesterday, and Adam scryed into my dreams last night so I could keep him safe. Keeping Gansey up for seventy two hours in row is-“

Thankfully, Opal emerged from the house before Ronan could say anything too insulting. “Come in!” she insisted, waving them toward her with one small hand.

Adam gave Ronan a meaningful glance. “We need to send her to Fox Way,” he said. “If you don’t want her to worry about this.”

Ronan looked reluctant; Adam knew how much he hated being away from Opal for long, how insecure and unsafe that made him feel, for the both of them. But he nodded nearly imperceptibly, which Adam took as permission to take control of the situation.

“Gansey,” Adam said, careful to keep his voice calm. “Why don’t you take a quick nap while Blue and I go look at Opal’s game. Ronan can show you which guest room to use.”

Adam trusted Ronan to look out for Gansey, and hoped an hour of sleep would at least be enough to help Gansey feel somewhat better, because he wasn’t willing to risk an unprotected nap longer than that.

Gansey managed a weary nod of assent, probably too exhausted to take his usual mantle of leader.

“I’d be delighted to see your game later,” Gansey assured Opal before she could pout too much. “But it’s been a dreadfully long drive, and I’m afraid I can barely keep my eyes open.”

Opal eyed him appraisingly. “Later,” she said decisively. “Pinky promise.”

“Of course,” answered Gansey, his voice lofty and deadly serious.

Making quick work of the porch steps, Opal stopped just short of running into Gansey and held out her small pinky, which he locked solemnly with his own.

“I texted my mom,” Blue said, looking up from her phone. “She says its fine to bring Opal over in an hour or so.”

“Where go?” Opal demanded, pushing her lip out petulantly.

“Auntie Maura’s,” Gansey told her, squatting to Opal’s eye level. “You like spending time with Auntie Maura, don’t you?”

Opal nodded excitedly. “Fun!”

Ronan made a face at the word “auntie,” though no one but Adam seemed to notice.

They all followed Opal back up the porch steps into the house, Adam and Blue falling dutifully in line behind her, while Ronan trailed behind with Gansey, their heads bent close together but their voices too quiet to hear, especially for Adam. He still sometimes envied them their closeness, despite his relationship with Ronan and his, as Blue had once put it, “freaky telepathy bromance” with Gansey. Ronan and Gansey always seemed to fit so easily together, like two jagged puzzle pieces that somehow aligned perfectly. Adam usually felt like he had to work harder at it.

Blue, seemingly to pick up on his mood, reached over to loop her arm with Adam’s as they walked through the entry way.

“One hour, Lynch,” she called over her shoulder. “Any longer and I’ll worry you’re trying to steal my boyfriend.”

Ronan scoffed from behind him. “You act like you’re not trying to steal mine right now.”

“And you act like I’m not succeeding.”

That made Adam laugh. “Don’t tease him like that,” he told Blue with faux-seriousness. “He’ll start taking you seriously.”

“Fuck you, Parrish,” said Ronan. “See if I won’t leave you for Gansey then.”

Before Adam could respond, another voice chimed up from the doorway.

“I thought you guys had finally sorted who was dating who,” Noah said, standing in what had moments before been empty space.

He looked more solid than he had since Adam had first met him, his normally-pallid cheeks almost rosy, his hair closer to blond than white. Still more smudge than boy, but the split had never been so close. Adam felt goosebumps rise along his arms.

They all stared at him, stopped in their tracks by Noah’s sudden appearance. None of them had seem him since Thanksgiving, and even then he hadn’t been particularly corporeal. Adam found himself staring, his mind blank when he tried to come up with something to say.

Gansey eventually broke the silence.

“‘Whom,’” he said, in his matter-of-fact, Gansey-esque pompousness.

They all turned their stares on Gansey.

“What?” Ronan demanded.

Gansey made a little throat-clearing noise. “It should be ‘dating whom,’” he explained. “Not ‘who.’”

“Gansey,” said Blue, still staring, incredulous. “I think I’ll actually have to leave you for Adam now.”

Ronan made a sound of protest. “He’s taken, maggot.”

“I’m free,” Noah offered.

That made Blue laugh. “I missed you, Noah,” she said, and dropped Adam’s arm to move toward Noah, throwing his arms around him in a spine-crushing hug

Noah caught her more easily than Adam would had expected, hugging her back with just as much enthusiasm.

“I missed you, too,” Noah told her as he put her down, a broad grin stretched across his face. “I’ve missed all of you.”

“How are you back?” Adam asked, and even to his own ears he sounded blunt, almost callous. “We haven’t seen you since Thanksgiving, and now… How do you look so-“

“Alive?” Noah interrupted. “I thought you’d all have figured that out by now.”

“What?” Adam replied, utterly confused. “How would we have figured it out if this is the first time we’ve seen you?”

Noah gestured to the bruises ringing Adam’s neck. “Because I’m back for the same reason you have those.”

* * *

Gansey tried to insist they all talk about what Noah had said immediately, offering up as a sort of compromise that they all move into the kitchen and that he would sleep afterward. He promised he could stay awake long enough to talk to Noah if he could have some coffee.

But Ronan flatly refused, basically dragging Gansey upstairs toward the guest room amid threats to drug him to sleep if necessary.

Adam, Blue, and Noah all followed Opal into her room to see her Minecraft game, while Ronan, his hand still grasped tightly around Gansey’s bicep, frogmarched him up to the end of the bed. Gansey stayed on his feet, however, crossing his arms and meeting Ronan’s glare easily, their eyes nearly level when Gansey tilted up his chin.

“You need to sleep,” Ronan told him gruffly. “You’re no fucking use to us half-dead from exhaustion.”

Gansey, the stubborn asshole, didn’t immediately collapse on the bed, though he looked about one good shove from falling over. “You heard what Noah said. We can hardly just ignore that so that I can take a nap.”  
Ronan felt his scowl deepen. “Whatever this shit is, it’s gonna be fucking complicated,” he said. “You can’t do your master strategist shit if you can barely keep your fucking eyes open. This might be the safest sleep you can get, and I can watch over you.”

“Ronan-“

But Ronan didn’t let him finish. “We can’t give you any kind of sleeping pills, because we don’t want you getting fucking… fucking trapped in a dream, and not being able to wake up. And whatever your fucking vague magical abilities are, you can’t scry like Parrish. So you either lie the fuck down right now, or I can knock your fucking lights out.”

Gansey raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Wouldn’t knocking me unconscious raise similar concerns to giving me slipping pills? I could hardly just be awoken should there be a sign of danger.”

“We probably shouldn’t test that theory, then.”

“I can sleep later-“

“One hour,” countered Ronan. “We can’t bring Opal over until then anyway, and I’m not talking about this shit with her here.” He paused, taking what seemed like a steadying breath. “And I want her here while you sleep. She kept me safe for a long time. If something goes wrong and we can’t wake you up, I… Not that I want to put the brat in even more fucking mortal danger, but if something goes wrong-“

“Alright,” Gansey relented. “One hour. Only because you’re so emotional about it.”

“You know, knocking you out is still sounding like a pretty fucking appealing option.“

“I’m only joking, Lynch.” Gansey said with a false airiness, finally flopping down on the bed. “But please don’t stand in the corner and watch me the whole time. Contrary to Calla’s misconceptions, you’re not my guard dog, and I don’t think I’d be able to sleep like that.”

Ronan bared his teeth. “I’m pretty fucking sure you’ll be asleep as soon as you finally close your goddamn eyes.”

He ended up being right. It couldn’t have been more than a minute before Gansey had begun snoring softly, his head half-buried in one of the Barns’s massive pillows. Ronan stretched himself out on the floor and stared at the ceiling, listening carefully to Gansey’s breathing in case it broke its even rhythm, but his friend’s sleep seemed peaceful. Ronan allowed himself a relieved breath, releasing just a bit of the tension that had been locked in his shoulders since he’d first heard Adam’s terrified voice over the phone.

Ronan had almost wanted to agree with Gansey to interrogate Noah about what the fuck he had meant immediately. But a little logical voice in the back of his head that sounded annoyingly like Adam had urged him toward common sense: letting Gansey sleep, letting Opal get dropped off at the psychics, before they got into whatever this new magical bullshit threat was. But that didn’t mean Ronan didn’t feel nearly sick from the anticipation of it, like a fist was clenched in his guts, like he might throw up any minute. Ronan hated waiting, hated being patient, hated feeling helpless, but there didn’t seem to be much else for him to do.

If he couldn’t get to the thing hurting Adam and Gansey yet, though, at least he could make Gansey get some fucking sleep for once in his life. That had to count for something.

So Ronan lay on the floor, stared at the ceiling, and mouthed his prayers, the Our Fathers and Hail Marys he’d had memorized from mass and Sunday school long before he’d understood the meanings of the words he was saying. Sometimes, the familiarity helped Ronan to calm his frantic breathing and thoughts. Sometimes, he could believe that someone actually cared enough to listen to his prayers.

* * *

Gansey woke up gasping, sitting suddenly bolt upright in bed with all the blood drained from his face. Ronan was up in an instant, his hands hovering over Gansey’s back, scared to touch unless he accidentally broke his friend in his attempts to help. It took Gansey a few struggling breaths to suppress his panic enough to speak.

Finally, he managed, “I saw him.”

“Saw who?” Ronan demanded. He allowed his hand to come down on Gansey’s shoulder, trying to offer what comfort he could.

“Whom,” Gansey corrected, like a reflex.

Ronan nearly throttled him himself, but held himself back, and spoke through gritted teeth. “Fucking whom, then, whom the fuck did you see?”

“Glendower,” Gansey said, his voice uncharacteristically small. “It was Glendower.”

* * *

“I didn’t see Glendower,” Adam said, his tone contrary. He’d seemed to bristle at Gansey’s description of the dream monster. “I… It was vague, what I could see and what I remember, but I know it wasn’t Glendower.”

Adam stood near the doorway, his back pressed against Ronan’s chest and Ronan’s long limbs draped around him so that his warmth seeped into Adam’s skin. It felt a little uncomfortable, Ronan’s weight heavy on his shoulders, especially in the same room as their friends. But Adam had seen the haunted look in Ronan’s eyes when he and Blue had come into the room, the way he hadn’t been able to tear his gaze from Adam’s face even as Gansey had hoarsely explained his nightmare, and hadn’t been able to bring himself to deny Ronan what little comfort his touch could offer. And, however reluctant Adam might have been to admit it to anyone but maybe Ronan, the touch seemed to quiet the anxious fluttering of his heart and the tired throb at the back of his head.

Instead, Adam projected his desire to rankle under the attention into his obstinance toward Gansey: a familiar rhythm to their conversations, which had the added bonus of hopefully drawing Gansey back to some sense of normalcy. Adam couldn’t stand the shellshocked look in his friend’s eyes as Gansey stared up at them from where he sat on the end of the bed, Blue’s small hands clasped tightly around his as though to ground him. He hated seeing Gansey uncertain, and feeling that much more unmoored himself. He figured at least Gansey would feel more certain if he were arguing with Adam, establishing and defending himself.

“But I did,” Gansey insisted. “I’ve certainly seen every authoritative portrait there is of Glendower at this point. He has haunted my dreams, consumed my thoughts, so many untold hours of my life. I know Glendower, and this was him. Well, mostly him.”

“Mostly?” Ronan demanded. Adam could feel Ronan’s voice vibrate through his own chest.

Gansey paused for a moment, as though gathering his thoughts together. “He wasn’t quite right, I suppose. His skin seemed… pale, waxy, almost rotting. And so… so shifting, and wrong, and… and, and distorted, somehow. Just wrong, fundamentally, if that means anything.”

Adam started to shrug, but Ronan’s weight kept him from moving his shoulders much. 

“Doesn’t mean too much.”

“What about the eyes?” Ronan asked. “Did you notice his eyes?”  
“Dead,” Gansey said, this with absolute certainty. “His eyes were dead.”

A shiver ran through Adam’s body.

“That’s what Calla said,” Adam told them. “When she touched my bruises, she saw… something, vague and contradictory, but she knew the eyes were dead, but still seeing.”

Gansey nodded gravely. “He definitely saw me. He was reaching for me, before I woke up.”

He felt his exhaustion suddenly so much more acutely, like weights dragging his limbs toward the ground, impossible to push from the forefront of his mind. Adam leaned further against Ronan, so that his boyfriend was nearly propping him up - like leaning against a wall - and allowed Ronan’s broad arms to wrap more firmly around him.

“I didn’t see Glendower, though,” Adam repeated. “Whatever I saw, I- It was vague I don’t totally remember it clearly, but I know it wasn’t Glendower.”

Noah spoke up from where he’d sat, cross-legged, on the floor, so quiet until then that Adam would have forgotten him had he not looked so disconcertingly solid.

“Well,” he said, “It wouldn’t be Glendower for Adam, would it?”

They all turned to face him at once.

“What the hell does that mean?” Blue asked, her face screwed up in frustration.

“Gansey is connected to Glendower,” Noah said, as though he were explaining, “Gansey was obsessed with him. Glendower would be connected to his worst nightmares - of dying, and the cave, and to basically everything else in his life for years. But it doesn’t have the same meaning for Adam.”

“Why would that mean anything?” Ronan demanded. “It’s just one fucking thing, right?”

Noah shrugged. “Not necessarily. It could be a shapeshifter, or multiple creatures, or even something else just manifesting in your dreams because of your connection with Cabeswater, taking on the shape of whatever you’re most scared of.”

“I’m not scared of Glendower,” Gansey argued.

“No,” Blue agreed, some sort of understanding seeming to dawn on her. “But it’s like Noah said, right? Glendower is connected to all of Gansey’s fears and a lot of his memories. It’s what he fixated on when he thought he was going to die. Like a manifestation, maybe? Or a reflection of Gansey’s head once… once whatever it is is inside his dreams.”

“So its not necessarily our worst fear,” Adam said, trying to reason it out aloud, “But more… whatever’s in our head? It reflects back what it finds, and uses that to give itself a form?”  
Noah made a face. “Sounds about right. I only know… only bits and pieces, and its more intuition than anything. But whatever it is, it’s why I’m stronger ”

“But how did it get in their heads in the first place?” Ronan asked, just the littlest bit frantic. 

Adam leaned his head back until the base of his skull rested on Ronan’s shoulder, wishing he could offer some more tangible form of comfort to help Ronan calm down.

“Maybe its connected to the ley line,” Blue suggested. “Noah is, I don’t know, back or stronger, and he seems to know a lot, which would mean the ley line. And Adam is obviously connected to it.”

“The ley line is stronger than before,” Adam agreed; he could feel it, beating along with his pulse.

“We should ask your mom,” Gansey suggested, his face turned toward Blue. “We’re putting together fragments of pieces, it seems, and maybe I’m just sleep deprived, but I feel far in over my head here.”

Blue nodded, and pressed a soft kiss to his temple. “Okay,” she said, her voice soft. “Are you up for that?”

Gansey managed a rueful half smile. “Does it matter? I can’t sleep until this is dealt with, at least not safely. Whatever we do to deal with this, I have to be a part of it.”

Adam didn’t think they’d have left Gansey behind regardless. He was a part of this, in the larger sense of their group of pretentious misfits. To move forward without him would have felt vulnerable and incomplete.

“We should go to the mountains first,” Noah said suddenly.

Ronan turned toward him. “What? Why?”

But when Noah answered, he addressed himself to Adam. “You feel it too, right?”

Without really knowing why, Adam nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s where we need to go.”

“Is this some supernatural intuition thing?” Blue asked, her eyes moving between the two of them.

Noah shrugged.

Gansey gave a put-upon sigh. “To the mountains we go, then. Best not to dally too much longer.”

Ronan seemed to agree. He untangled himself from around Adam, only to reach down immediately and thread their fingers together on both hands.

“We’ll grab Opal,” he said, tugging Adam with him through the doorway behind him. “Make sure Dick is okay, Sargent?”

That seemed significant to Adam, Ronan so vocally entrusting Gansey to Blue, but he didn’t have a chance to say something about it. Halfway down the grand hallway - and just out of earshot of their friends - Ronan turned suddenly on his heel, crowding Adam up against the wall with a hot, open-mouthed kiss that seemed to steal the breath from Adam’s lungs. His hands came up to cradle Adam’s face, his grip still gentle even in his apparent urgency.

“You’re okay?” Ronan confirmed, his eyes - centimeters from Adam’s - holding his gaze intently.

“Yeah,” Adam breathed, still a little dizzy from the kiss. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“I just…” Ronan stopped, took a breath. “I saw Gansey, and once I knew he was okay, all I could picture was you, alone and trying to breathe and…”

Adam kissed him again, brief but solid. “I’m here. I’m okay. I’m alive.”

“I love you,” Ronan told him fiercely. His hands were still framing Adam’s face.

“I love you, too.”

“Ewww,” came Opal’s voice from behind them.

They stepped away from each other reluctantly, and turned to face her where she stood outside her doorway at the end of the hall.

“Ready to go, brat?” Ronan asked. He tried to sound gruff, but his face and ears were still bright red.

Opal screwed up her face. “You’re gross,” she informed them.

Ronan screwed up his face. “You’re gross, brat. Grab your stuff. We’re going back to the psychics.”

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought and find me on [tumblr](http://salvagingthestars.tumblr.com)


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